The $300 House: The Energy Challenge

Editor’s note: This post is one in an occasional series on Vijay Govindarajan’s and Christian Sarkar’s idea to create a scalable housing solution for the world’s poor. Each post will examine the challenge from a different perspective, including design, technology, urban planning and more. Today, Bob Freling examines the energy challenge.

For more than 20 years, the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) has worked to deliver solar power to rural villages in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. At SELF, our belief is that energy is a human right, and that without energy, community development becomes virtually impossible.

That’s why we were both impressed and excited that Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar included energy access as a key requirement in their $300 House challenge. Energy is often an overlooked variable when people begin talking about housing the poor. Govindarajan and Sarkar have rightly assumed you can’t have one without the other.

Our experience with “whole village” solar electrification can help the $300 House community understand some of the opportunities and challenges of powering entirely new villages of $300 Houses.

I see two distinct approaches to the powering of the $300 House.

The first applies to individual houses and uses the latest LED solar technologies, which are both portable and inexpensive. LED solar tech can provide lighting, cell-phone charging, and other small scale applications and can be purchased with microcredit by individuals and families. With our experiences in micro-finance, we see no reason why the $300 house and the solar panel cannot be bundled as part of the same financial package.

In fact, they must be. To overcome the initial cost of photovoltaic technology, SELF has pioneered a variety of financing mechanisms which enable families to purchase solar home systems over time, paying only slightly more than what they previously spent on kerosene, candles, and dry-cell batteries. More could be done if the cost of the solar cells became part of the cost of the house.

The second approach involves the use of solar micro-grids — powering an entire village of $300 Houses with a micro-solar power plant. This is a newer concept. At SELF, we’re examining both the technology and the payment options, including micropayments made through mobile phones to access the micro-grid, to see how best to introduce them across the world.

Which approach is the right one isn’t clear yet. More discussion in this forum will help determine the best approach. However, through our experience in bottom-of-the pyramid markets, we’ve identified an obvious pattern of how providing solar energy at the village level works. We call this the Solar Integrated Development (SID) Maturity Model. It looks like this:

It’s simple really. First, solar energy powers pumps and filters for clean water. This also enables drip irrigation for critical crops. Once people have those necessities, the solar energy is used to power health care facilities which can power equipment and refrigerate vaccines, for example. This increasingly healthy population can then open schools which are powered by solar to provide computer- and Internet-based learning. Finally, these well-fed, well-cared for, well-educated villagers can begin community and entrepreneurial activities to grow their economy. (Watch a short documentary the SID model here.)

This model could be adapted to an urban slum-replacing village of $300 Houses as well. In Benin, West Africa, for example, we powered a community garden which we’ve dubbed the “Solar Market Garden” — a half-hectare piece of land collectively looked after by a group of 35 women in the village.

Implicit and key in the framework is that poverty at the village level cannot and will not be eradicated unless we also address the human need for basic shelter. (The link between adequate housing and health is well documented.) That’s where the $300 house comes into play. The Solar Integrated Development Maturity Model is realized when we’re also able to provide exactly what Govindarajan and Sarkar are proposing. Together with potable water, nutritious food, accessible health care, educational opportunity, and economic empowerment, the $300 House completes this virtuous ecosystem in which individual households and their communities can march hand in hand towards a bright and sustainable future.

Though we focus on solar energy, we believe that if we are to solve the problem of poverty, it begins with the home. Quite simply, the $300 House brings together all of poverty’s challenges, just as this series of blogs is bringing together all of those devoted to taking on those challenges. Join us at 300House.com.